laude in 1948. The following year he received a
master’s of art degree from the University of
Rochester. After completing his education, Kin-
nell supervised the liberal arts program at the
University of Chicago until 1955. In 1956 and
1957, he taught at the University of Grenoble, in
Grenoble, France, as a Fulbright lecturer. A sec-
ond Fulbright provided a lectureship at the Uni-
versity of Iran, in Teheran, in 1959 and 1960.
Kinnell’s first collection of poetry,What a King-
dom It Was, was published in 1960, upon his
return to the United States. A second collection
of poetry,Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock,
appeared in 1964. In 1965, Kinnell married Inez
Delgado del Torres. A daughter was born in 1966
and a son in 1968. Throughout the 1960s, Kinnell
was active in social protests. He joined the Con-
gress of Racial Equality (CORE) and was arrested
during an integration protest in Louisiana. Kin-
nell’s experiences as a social activist found expres-
sion in his poetry, most notably inBody Rags
(1968) andThe Book of Nightmares(1971), a nar-
rative poem about the Vietnam War. Kinnell had
actively protested against the war, and those views
about the war found their way into his poetry.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Kinnell worked
as an adjunct professor in writing programs at
several universities across the United States,
from the East Coast (Columbia University) to
the West Coast (University of California at
Irvine), with many stops in between. He was
the recipient of several poetry honors during
the 1970s. In 1974, he received the Shelley Prize
from the Poetry Society of America and the
Medal of Merit from the National Institute of
Arts and Letters in 1975.Mortal Acts, Mortal
Wordswas published in 1980, which turned out
to be a decade in which Kinnell published some
of his most acclaimed poetry.Selected Poems
(1982) earned a Pulitzer Prize and the National
Book Award in 1983. Kinnell received a Mac-
Arthur Fellowship in 1984. In 1986, another
collection of poetry,The Past(1985), garnered
a National Book Critics Circle Award for Kin-
nell. In 1987, Kinnell editedThe Essential Whit-
man. Kinnell’s poetry has often been compared
to Whitman’s.
Kinnell’s 1990 book of poetry,When One
Has Lived a Long Time Alone, was his twenty-
second collection of his verse. In 1996,Imperfect
Thirst (1994) was a finalist for the National
Book Award. Two additional collections of
poetry appeared subsequently—A New Selected
Poems(2001), which was selected as a finalist for
the 2000 National Book Award, andStrong Is
Your Hold(2006). Kinnell received the Frost
Medal from the Poetry Society of America in
2002 and served as chancellor of the Academy
of American Poets from 2001 to 2007. As of
2009, Kinnell resided in New York City and
Vermont.Poem Text
I love to go out in late September
among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries
to eat blackberries for breakfast,
the stalks very prickly, a penalty
they earn for knowing the black art 5
of blackberry-making; and as I stand among
them
lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries
fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words
likestrengthsorsquinched,10
many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps,Galway Kinnell(AP Images)
Blackberry Eating